Fearing violence, California State University trustees will cancel next week's vote on salaries for campus presidents, they said Wednesday - the same day a state senator criticized the University of California regents for handing out state-funded raises of up to 22 percent to some of UC's best-paid executives.

"Time and time again, rather than protecting the needs of students and California families, the regents and trustees line the pockets of their top executives," Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said Wednesday after learning that the pay raises were among the actions taken by the regents in a Monday teleconference protested by students on campuses around the state.

Yee's assessment echoed that of thousands of student protesters who have joined the Occupy movement in recent weeks and likened university leaders to Wall Street fat cats for paying themselves more money even as they consistently raise tuition.

"While these public administrators are living high on the hog, many Californians are struggling," Yee said.

On Monday, the UC regents gave a 9.9 percent raise to each of three vice chancellors. Another vice chancellor, Joseph Castro of UCSF, received a 7.5 percent increase, raising his pay to $252,625 a year.

The regents also gave raises to the head attorneys at six campuses, including 8.9 percent to Marcia Canning of UCSF and 21.19 percent to Steven Drown of UC Davis, increasing their base pay to $255,000 a year. Carole Rossi of UC Santa Cruz received a 13.9 percent increase, raising her annual pay to $215,000.

The regents also used nonstate funds to give raises of nearly 14 percent and 23 percent to two executives at UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz.

Raises are "a tough argument to make in this environment," acknowledged UC spokeswoman Lynn Tierney. "At the same time, it's critical to ensure that we have the best possible people."

Meanwhile, the CSU trustees had scheduled a special meeting in Long Beach on Monday, not to award raises but to vote on a new policy for determining how much to pay CSU's 23 campus presidents.

They canceled it because "we couldn't guarantee the safety of people coming to the meeting," said CSU spokeswoman Claudia Keith. At their last meeting on Nov. 16, when the trustees raised tuition by 9 percent, protesters clashed with police at CSU headquarters in Long Beach, breaking the building's glass door and sending one officer to the hospital.

CSU makes presidential salary decisions by looking at what other universities are paying, and has used the same 10 public and five private universities as a comparison group since 1993.

But the economy and the universities have changed in that time, and the trustees had been expected to adopt a new comparison system on Monday. The proposal groups CSU campuses into categories, comparing each with different universities based on the characteristics of those campuses.

San Diego State, for example, is the only campus with a high level of research, so it would be compared with other research-focused institutions.

San Francisco State and San Jose State are among six CSU campuses with a mid-range level of research as well as high enrollment.

Other campuses are smaller, and would be compared against schools of similar sizes.

Another issue the trustees were to take up on Monday was raising private money for presidential salaries if state lawmakers approve a cap on executive pay in bad budget years. Yee introduced such a bill in 2009, which was vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Among the ideas proposed are a 1 percent surcharge on such services as housing and parking, creating a fund where donors could chip in, and offering a CSU credit card for alumni in which a percentage of charges would go to presidential salaries.

Asked why these methods would be considered for executive pay but not for shoring up CSU's cash-strapped academic program, Keith said it was less expensive to bolster the presidents than the entire faculty.

"They're a much smaller group," Keith said of the presidents. "There are only 23 of them, compared with 20,000 faculty members."

The trustees expect to take up the presidential pay issues at their next scheduled meeting, on Jan. 24 and 25.